Ground has been broken on our house! The hole for the basement was dug, and they started putting in the concrete for the basement. So things are moving along! Looks like our garage will be on the right as you look at the house. Our backyard definitely will be shallow, but our side yards will be decent size, judging from how the hole was dug. We think they started last Thursday, but we have some pictures from Friday. Enjoy!

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I've added two new sets of pictures to our home page. One set is from my cousin Mary's wedding in Minnesota, and the second is from my recent conference trip to Seattle. They are listed toward the top of the pictures links. Things are going well on the house front. We've signed the contract and filled out the loan forms. Now they just gotta start building!

Ashley and I are going to build a new house! Read all about it here. Pictures from my cousin Mary's wedding will be posted later this weekend. Take care!

Finally got the last two rolls from the underwater cameras developed, so we've added 30 new pictures from the Great Barrier Reef snorkeling adventure to the Australia and New Zealand picture page. Ashley started her new vet job after we returned from our trip, and is enjoying it so far. She is commuting to Boulder for the summer, and will move to a Fort Collins clinic in a couple months. We're starting the house-buying process, much to Ashley's delight! We spent the 4th in Brush, Colorado, with the Browns, Kay, and Tom and Amy Murphy (plus their kids). Was a lot of fun! Brush, which is out on the eastern plains, has one of the better 4th of July celebrations around, with a big parade, a rodeo, and some great fireworks. We were so close to the fireworks that it shook our bodies!

Well, Ashley and I returned from Australia and New Zealand last week, and I finally was able to post all of our pictures. You can find the picture page, along with some description of what we did, here. The trip was fabulous, and we got to see and do quite a lot. So head on over and enjoy the pictures!

Well, Ashley's brother Mat was married last weekend in Las Vegas. You can see pictures by following this link. Was a fun time catching up with friends and family, as well as gambling and seeing the Vegas sites! Also added a few pictures courtesy of Barbara Calvin to Ashley's graduation pictures. We leave tomorrow for Australia and New Zealand, so this site won't be updated until mid-to-late June, but I promise to get pictures from the trip up right after that!

Ashley graduated from Tufts Veterinary School last Sunday. Ashley's parents and cousins, as well as my parents and Uncle John and Aunt Rosemary Lang, were all able to attend. Pictures from the festivities can be found on our main web site, just follow this link. We leave for Las Vegas and Ashley's brother's wedding this Friday. Then we're headed to Australia the first weekend in June, for a two week vacation with Ashley's parents. The traveling never stops!

Ashley left for Massachusetts today. She is very ready to graduate but hasn't resolved her job hunt yet, though she may do so soon. Stay tuned. I follow her out to MA on Thursday. Her parents and cousins and my parents will all be there. Should be quite the party!

On Thursday I give a seminar on my Nepal research to the CSU Department of Atmospheric Science. Ashley is nearing the end of her rotation schedule, with only two weeks left to go! After that, graduation is on 18 May and her brother, Mat, gets married the following weekend in Las Vegas. We'll be staying at the Bellagio for that event!

Been a while, sorry about that ... links to some interesting recent satellite photos of Baghdad can be found here. Resolution is as good as 1 meter and the oil fire smoke plumes and some bomb damage can be seen clearly. Ashley is back in town for the time being. She is studying for the vet board exam as well as interviewing at several different practices along the Front Range. Me, I'm just cruisin' along at work. :)

Well, the weather service didn't lie. We got slammed by the biggest snowfall in recent history. Bigger than the October 1997 blizzard, probably. Storm totals as of this morning can be found here. Winter Park got 5 feet! But you can't get there because Berthoud Pass is closed. Heh. Breckenridge got about 2 feet, with resorts further west getting less. Classic upslope snowstorm pattern, with the foothill regions getting really slammed. (Check out the 74 inches in Clear Creek County!) They claim 28 inches in Fort Collins, and based on my survey outside the apartment this morning, I believe them. Plus we're due another 3-6 inches today. Have a look at some digital pix I just snapped:

• Some person managed to clean off their car recently. But they ain't driving it very soon. :)
  
• The Calvin Durango's on the right. It got driven yesterday. (What fun!) Ashley's Saturn is somewhere in there.
  
• My Chevrolet's in the left foreground, not that you can see it. :)
  
• A whole suite of snowed-in vehicles
  
• The poor trees! This is really heavy snow for CO, but not quite classic Sierra Cement.
  
• Believe it or not, these actually are stairs.
  
• Even our protected deck got hit. Check out the snow "wall" made by the sliding door. Good thing Ashley brought those bikes back from MA. Heh.
  
• Sunshine checks out the snow: Pic 1 - Pic 2 - Pic 3
  

Needless to say, CSU is closed. But the CSU-CHILL radar has been running and taking observations for the last few days, and is still going strong. Check out some real-time radar images here.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! Ashley is off in South Dakota at the Rosebud Indian Reservation for the week, doing rural vet medicine there. She's swamped with tons of surgeries every day (traveling service so everyone waits up to get their pets healed). Was here only for a couple days before heading to SD, but still great to see her. It was unseasonably warm here the past week, so I didn't go skiing this past weekend. But I may go either this weekend or definitely the weekend of the 29th as a friend from MA is coming into town. Rained overnight here so maybe we're getting back to regular spring weather. Guess we'll see!

No skiing this past weekend - had to do chores and the like as Ashley returns soon. She left Massasucksit yesterday and made it as far as western Pennsylvania. Short trip, but she was on call the night before and had to go in twice. Ouch! Anyway, she should be back sometime on Wednesday. Looking forward to her return!

Skiing was really good this weekend. My officemate Steve Nesbitt went along. We skied both days, at Beaver Creek and Breckenridge. Unfortunately, someone took one of my poles the first day during lunch! So I had to ski the rest of the afternoon with only one pole. Was pretty amusing since the pole was so ridiculously old and beat-up I'm not sure why anyone would even bother taking it. Had to borrow Ashley's poles the second day. Just got back from a presentation where they showed video of a firestorm-induced tornado ... pretty interesting, although you'll have a hard time viewing all the clips without a fast connection.

Ashley got to meet former president George H. W. Bush yesterday. Even had a photo op with him. So that's pretty exciting. Her hours are not as bad this week, which is great since her mother is in town. Myself, I got to see my cousin Ann Specht and her daughter Haley, as they were passing through town visiting the Browns. She is taking her brother-in-law back to Colorado Springs as he was called up for the National Guard recently and needs to join his unit to be deployed. Good luck to him. Haley's 2 now and is quite the ham. :)

Well, a bit light in the posts lately, but anyway last weekend's skiing was great. There was knee-deep powder in Vail's Back Bowls, and the face shots from turning in it got so heavy at times I couldn't see and was breathing snow. Pretty cool. This week I've been continuing to update the STEPS BAMS article, a little each day. Also, I am doing literature reviews for the radar observations of smoke research. Expect updates to both of these sites in the immediate future. Ashley's mother is visiting her in MA. They are going to a luncheon and a talk featuring former president George H. W. Bush. Looking forward to hearing how that goes. Cheers.

Headed to the mountains again this weekend. Looking at skiing Vail. Haven't done that resort since 1998. In fact, the last time I was there was the day the Denver Broncos first won the Superbowl. Looking forward to it since they've added about 1000 acres or so since I was last there. Probably only one day skiing this weekend, though. Will come back Sunday morning.

Skiing was good this past weekend. Did a day at Keystone and one at Arapahoe Basin. Still pretty low snow bases but better than last year, apparently. I wouldn't know since I didn't ski past December last season. Maybe we could use some of those feet dropped on the East Coast, in particular the 49 inches dropped in western Maryland. That would pretty much end any snowpack issues. :) Though we could do without the 20+ deaths as a result. Ashley reported at least a foot as of last night in central Massasucksit, with the worst yet to come overnight. Did a rought calculation of federal taxes this morning. We're owed over $1700 from the feds alone. Think it might be time to decrease the paycheck withholding. Heh.

Well, first of all I'd like to wish a very happy Valentine's day to all of my loved ones, especially my lovely bride. I have provided major facelifts to both my research website as well as the main site. Things should be more visually appealing now. Also, I added a fair amount of new material to the research site, so you can learn more about my present and past work. Going skiing this weekend, so I'll be at the Breck house. Toodles.

Well, the STEPS BAMS article draft web page went live today. A link to it also exists on my research web site. Check it out and see what's been done so far. The article is meant to be understood by non-researchers, so if something doesn't make sense to you, let me know. Had dinner with the Browns last night. Mike cooked and made a really mean marinated pork chop.